Port Costa School - CEQA and Section 106

Groundwork Preservation LLC was hired by Bargas Environmental Consulting LLC on behalf of The Field Semester, an environmental education non-profit who plans to adaptively reuse the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and California Register of Historic Resources (CRHR) listed property, the Port Costa School in Port Costa, California. The project is part of a larger initiative to restore the Bull Valley Watershed and provide environmental science education to high school students. The Port Costa School was built in 1912 and the grand neo-classical building served as the only school in Port Costa until it closed in 1966. The project evaluation was structured in the form of a historic resource assessment accompanied by State of California survey forms (DPR 523 series). The assessment re-evaluated the eligibility of the schoolhouse for the NRHP and CRHR.

Groundwork conducted original research on the schoolhouse through the consultation of historic materials at the Port Costa School and online research at repositories such as Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com. The assessment concluded that the Port Costa School remains eligible for listing on the NRHP and CRHR and the client’s proposed adaptive reuse project complied with CEQA and Section 106 regulations.